Yourish.com

06/16/2009

Speak softly and carry no stick

Filed under: Iran, Politics — Tags: , — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

In Obama’s message to Iran, David Ignatius writes:

The stormy Iranian elections are one more sign of how the world has been shaken up in the age of Barack Obama. The ruling mullahs are nervous about a threat to the regime; the opposition is in the streets protesting what they assert is a rigged election. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is claiming a new mandate, but what the world sees is the regime’s vulnerability.

And what should Obama say about this ferment in Iran, a process that he has subtly encouraged? I’d argue that he should continue with the line he took in his Cairo speech two weeks ago — speaking directly to Muslim publics even as he proposes dialogue with the repressive regimes that govern Iran and many other nations.

Obama would make a mistake if he seemed to meddle in Iranian politics. That would give the mullahs the foreign enemy they need to discredit the reformers. Obama struck the right tone when he said late Monday: “The world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was.” The basic message is: We support the Iranian people and their democracy. Any change in how Iran is governed is their decision, not America’s.

Is that what happened? I’d read the situation differently. It looks to me that after President Obama addressed the leadership of Iran both specifically in his New Year message and generally in his Cairo speech, the Iranian leadership saw it had little to fear from President Obama. When its preferred candidate seemed in danger of losing the carefully controlled election, the country’s leadership acted to save his political career.

In a nutshell, Ignatius claims (using anonymous “intelligence officials” to buttress his argument:) claims that by taking a non-confrontational approach to the Arab and Muslim worlds, President Obama has encouraged the reform movement in Iran.

Not everyone views the President’s reticence in facing up to tyranny as a good thing. Michael Totten who eschews self-interested “intelligence officials” in favor of his own observations, writes:

The “March 14” activists were, in fact, denounced as stooges of the Americans by Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian parties in Lebanon, but it didn’t matter. I met anti-Americans among the demonstrators, but none were mad that the Bush Administration supported them. His support actually eased their anti-American sentiment somewhat. “You are new friends of ours here in Lebanon,” one conservative Sunni Lebanese told me.

Nor did the president’s support make the Syrian military any more likely to beat civilians into submission. Nobody was killed, and the “March 14” movement won. “I am not Saddam Hussein,” Syria’s tyrant Bashar Assad said. “I want to cooperate.” The Syrian military left Lebanon shortly thereafter.

Whether or not President Bush’s support for the “March 14” revolution helped very much, it certainly didn’t hurt.

Bret Stephens,after criticizing the President for taking a harder line against an ally – PM Netanyahu – than against America’s enemies, argues (and notes some presidential hypocrisy):

This is a strange turn of events. In Cairo two weeks ago, Mr. Obama trumpeted “my commitment . . . to governments that reflect the will of the people.” He also lamented that “the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Yet here is his administration disavowing the first of these commitments while acquiescing in the overthrow — before it can even be installed — of another democratically elected Iranian government.

Now a presidency that’s supposed to be all about hope is suddenly in cynical realpolitik mode — the only “hope” it means to keep alive being a “grand bargain” over Iran’s nuclear program. This never had much chance of success, but at least until Friday’s sham poll it wasn’t flatly at odds with the interests of ordinary Iranians. Not anymore.

Here’s a recent comment from one Iranian demonstrator posted on the Web site of the National Iranian American Council. “WE NEED HELP, WE NEED SUPPORT,” this demonstrator wrote. “Time is not on our side. . . . The most essential need of young Iranians is to be recognized by US government. They need them not to accept the results and do not talk to government as an official, approved one.”

Barry Rubin writes in 48 hours of reality overthrows Obama’s Middle East policy:

President Barack Obama based his policy of engaging with Iran on the idea that while President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a wild man, Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei was a closet moderate, or at least a pragmatist.
Now all can see that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are wedded, together at last. Khamenei is so set on Ahmadinejad’s character and policy that he risked the regime’s internal and external credibility and stability in order to reassure his reelection.

Prof Rubin ties this together with another area where President Obama’s outreach has failed to achieve the desired results:

Now if Obama was right, the Palestinians should be eager for a state. So if Netanyahu calls on them to recognize Israel as a Jewish state—what do they care if they are accepting to live alongside it permanently?—and have their own state. Yes, that state would be “demilitarized,” I prefer the word “unmilitarized,” but all that means is that they would have the same security forces that they do now. And in proportional terms, the Palestinian Authority (PA) already has more men in uniform compared to the overall population, than any state on the planet.

So here’s Obama’s solution: an independent Palestinian state, Muslim and Arab, according to the PA’s constitution for that country, next to a Jewish state.

But how does the PA’s leader—who is always referred to as “moderate” in the Western media and is more moderate than any other Palestinian leader (it’s all relative)—react?

Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for PA leader Abbas, said Netanyahu’s speech “torpedoes all peace initiatives in the region.” Another top PA leader, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said that recognizing Israel’s Jewish character would force Palestinians “to become part of the global Zionist movement”.

David Ignatius, neatly tailors his column to prove that President Obama’s “speak softly and carry no stick” approach to extremists works. Recent events suggest that he’s wrong. The President has been encouraging the extremists at the expense of the moderates.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

02/25/2009

Desperately seeking obsequiousness

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Israel Derangement Syndrome — Tags: , , — Soccerdad @ 11:00 am

Anne Bayefsky’s ongoing coverage of the preparatory sessions for the upcoming Durban II conference have been both revealing and disappointing. Her latest has this:

Here is how the American delegates responded to a proposal they understood was incompatible with U.S. interests (”Brackets” denote withholding approval at any given moment in time.): “I hate to be the cause of unhappiness in the room . . . I have to suggest this phrase remains in brackets and I offer my sincere apologies.”

Having watched U.N. meetings for the past 25 years, I can’t remember a U.S. representative in a public session so openly obsequious, particularly in the presence of such specious human rights authorities. And yet the U.S. delegates appear happy to be there and convey the marching orders of their new commander-in-chief.

(The American bootlicking is undermining countries like Britain and Italy who are trying to change the direction of the Durban II conference.)

Unfortunately deferring to tyrants and despots has consequences beyond just the antisemitic Durban II hatefest. Barry Rubin fears that a number of situations in the world are deteriorating – in Lebanon, in Turkey and in Iran – and the United States has decided to be popular instead of strong. (h/t LGF and memeorandum)

In short, 2009 is looking like a year of massive defeat for the US and its friends in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Washington is blind to this trend, pursuing a futile attempt to conciliate its enemies, losing time and not adopting the policies desperately needed.

Instead, the US should make itself leader of a broad coalition of Arab and European states, along with Israel, to resist Islamism and Iranian ambitions.

Alas, the new administration is fooling around while the region burns.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

02/17/2009

Experience not politics

Filed under: Israel, Israeli Double Standard Time — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 11:00 am

I think that Bradley Burston – though he puts it a lot differently than I would – is making the same point I have. Or as his interviewee says (via memeorandum):

“In other words,” Alkalai concludes, “the majority vote was cast for a leadership – the right wing – that the public thinks can end the relationship with the most assets for Israelis and preferably no alimony at all for the spouse.”

Or as David Bernstein puts it:

The Israeli Left has lost the confidence of Israelis by persuading them to put their faith in a “peace process” premised on the assumption that the dispute with the Palestinians was primarily about land, and that if Israel was willing to withdraw from land appropriated in 1967, peace would ensue. That turned out to be overly simplistic, and perhaps very naive. I recall reading several left-wing Ha’aretz columnists who claimed during the Second Intifada that the underlying problem was that the Palestinians didn’t believe Israel would ever withdraw from any of the “occupied territories.” Israel subsequently did withdraw, from Gaza and part of Samaria, but this led to the election of Hamas in Gaza, not to the triumph of Palestinian doves. The left still clings to its paradigm, however. The Israeli right, meanwhile, has quickly shifted to what it is at least able to portray as a “realist” approach to the Palestinians. As is usual in politics, the side that has been better able to react to events on the ground, rather than sticking to ideological presuppositions, has won–which doesn’t, of course, make it right.

Barry Rubin puts it like this:

Most Israelis believe that the Palestinians don’t want to make a comprehensive peace with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state. Hamas doesn’t want it; the Palestinian Authority (PA) is both unwilling and unable to do it. Israel faces a hostile Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah, and various Islamist movements which all want to destroy it. In addition, it cannot depend on strong Western or international support in defending itself.

Therefore, it is not a moment for Israel to make big concessions or take big risks. Peace is not at hand. The priority—even while continuing negotiations and trying to help the PA to survive—is defense.

That’s what the people who voted for Labor or Likud or Lieberman, Kadima or Shas or National Union or Jewish Home or United Torah Judaism believed. More than 85 percent of Israelis voted for parties that hold that basic conception, while that concept itself is the product of a very serious assessment of very real experience. And that—whatever differences they have—is beyond any definition of “left” or “right.”

Israel has moved to the Left over the past 20 years. When commentators refer to right wing and left wing, they are describing much changed positions over that time. But as Prof Rubin concludes, there has been no reciprocal movement on the other side:

There is a Palestinian partner for the above four issues, but not for a comprehensive solution ending the conflict forever in exchange for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. As we learned in the 1990s with the peace process and more recently with disengagement, Israel’s actions—no matter how conciliatory and concessionary—cannot make peace when the other side is unwilling and unable to do so. It’s time for the rest of the world to learn this fact.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

01/29/2009

The irony of change

Filed under: Iran — Tags: , , — Soccerdad @ 9:00 am

I don’t have many arguments with Roger Cohen’s latest column, After the War on Terror. He’s correct that the President’s interview on Al Arabiya marks the end of the war on terror; that words are important and that President Obama is a lot closer to Cohen own “Israel is wrong” belief than President Bush was. It’s just that Cohen believes these are good things, I believe they are bad.

Cohen writes:

Tony Blair, now also a Middle East envoy and Mitchell’s partner in Belfast, once put it to me this way: “The only reason we got the breakthrough in Northern Ireland was we did in the end focus on it with such intensity over such a period that every little thing that went wrong — and everything that could go wrong did at some point — was all the time being managed and rectified.” He described the approach as: “Any time we can’t solve it, we have to manage it, until we can start to solve it again.”

Bush had the ideological framework wrong. Obama has righted it by ending the war on terror. Now comes the hard Middle Eastern slog of solve-manage-solve. It will need the president’s unswerving focus.

Barry Rubin, however, writes (on Facebook):

Second, two blocs contend for regional power. The better-organized, more coherent side is led by Islamist Iran, with junior partner Syria, Lebanese Hizballah, Palestinian Hamas, and Iraqi insurgents. Also on the Islamist–but not Iranian–side are Muslim Brotherhoods and al-Qaida. All want to destroy Western influence, Arab regimes, and Israel.
The other grouping consists of the other Arab states, Israel, and the West. Yet this alignment is weak, disorganized, and full of internal conflicts.

This illustrates the mistake Cohen is making. Cohen pretends that the West and the Iranian axis have enough in common that differences can be negotiated away. Prof. Rubin, on the other hand, is arguing that Iran’s interests diverge dramatically from those of the West. There is no managing and no accommodating Tehran.

Furthermore Fouad Ajami writes that this change is ironic.

The irony now is obvious: George W. Bush as a force for emancipation in Muslim lands, and Barack Hussein Obama as a messenger of the old, settled ways. Thus the “parochial” man takes abroad a message that Muslims and Arabs did not have tyranny in their DNA, and the man with Muslim and Kenyan and Indonesian fragments in his very life and identity is signaling an acceptance of the established order. Mr. Obama could still acknowledge the revolutionary impact of his predecessor’s diplomacy, but so far he has chosen not to do so.

Despite his oh-so-openminded approach to Iran (and other tyrannies) Cohen fails to grasp that he is acting as an apologist for its despotism. George Bush, for all his faults, tried to change the status quo in the Muslim world and make its citizens free. I had not remembered that President Bush had been interviewed numerous times on Al Arabiya. Unlike his successor, the former president was, at least at times, unapologetic for his actions and beliefs:

Q- But would these moments — I mean, these emotional moments, would they make you reconsider or rethink about what’s going on in our area now (Middle East)?

THE PRESIDENT: Not really. As a matter of fact, I leave most of the meetings reassured that the loved one, in this case, fully understanding what we were doing. See, I believe that, one, it’s noble to liberate 25 million people from a tyrant; two, that we cannot allow Iraq to be a safe haven for people who have sworn allegiance to those who have attacked us. In other words, I believe we must defeat the extremists there so we don’t have to face them here at home. And three, I believe the spread of liberty will yield peace. And I believe the Middle East is plenty capable of being a part of the world where liberty flourishes. That’s what I believe people want.

And so I leave those meetings saddened by the fact that a person has pain in her heart — and yesterday she had pain in her heart — but encouraged by the fact that her son died for a noble cause and a necessary cause. And that’s exactly what she told me.

President Obama’s outreach has been met with an angry slap, (via memeorandum) not a hand of conciliation. Apparently, Ahmadinejad did not have the benefit of reading Cohen’s column before reacting to President Obama’s words.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

11/27/2008

Flaunting it

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Israel, Israeli Double Standard Time, palestinian politics — Tags: , , — Soccerdad @ 4:00 pm

Back in 1988, Commentary magazine had a symposium of intellectuals discussing Israel. One of the contributors, Edward Rothstein, observed that when he drove by Judea and Samaria he was amazed by the number of TV antennas shaped like the Eiffel tower, a sign that the Palestinians were not suffering nearly as much as advertised.

More recently (March, 2007) Shiloh Musings photographed quite a few mansions going up in the Palestinian areas north of Jerusalem.

That not all Palestinians live lives of quiet desperation, is a revelation to quite a few people, especially “journalists.” Karin Laub, for one, finds it amazing that Munib Masri has built himself a mansion.

Masri’s villa sits atop Mount Gerizim, considered sacred by the Samaritans, an ancient sect that practices an offshoot of Judaism and whose descendants live nearby.

The mansion is an exact copy of a famous 16th-century villa, known as “La Rotonda,” built by Italian architect Andrea Palladio. It is capped by a rotunda and has temple fronts with columns on four sides.

Construction began in 1998, with most material imported from France in 200 40-foot shipping containers. The work continued after the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, and at the height of fighting, Israeli tanks took up positions on his property for a while, Masri said.

But as Barry Rubin points out, Masri’s wealth wasn’t just the result of hard work. As the article mentions, without elaborating, Masri held a telecommunications monopoly. Rubin explains.

We are not told from whence this monopoly came—from the PA. The word corruption is never mentioned. Such a lack of curiosity about the sources of his wealth does not accord with journalistic practices in covering other stories.

Indeed, the story of the telecommunications monopoly is one of the best-known stories of corruption among Palestinians. How PA and Fatah factions competed over the loot, how Arafat intervened directly into the issue.

(Indeed the best off among the Palestinians have benefited from monopolies, see The Man who Swallowed Gaza and How Important is the PLO. Michael Kelly’s Investing in Yasser Arafat illustrates a similar point.)

Rubin’s point is that Laub shouldn’t be focusing on the contrast between Mr. Masri and other Palestinians, or between his success and the “occupation.” Rather Laub – and other reporters – should be focusing on how Masri obtained his wealth and how that illustrates the failure of the so-called “peace process.” Dr. Rubin includes some points to consider:

–The Palestinian upper economic and political class cares nothing for its own people.
–In its fourteen-year rule of the West Bank, the PA has focused on looting it rather than on raising living standards and providing good government.
–Billions of dollars in international aid donations have disappeared, probably paying for a large portion of Masri’s mansion.
–The PA’s failures are blamed on Israel both by the PA itself, Western governments, and the international media.
–Palestinian suffering is not primarily due to Israel but to their own leaders.
–A lot of Israel’s success has been due to Jews around the world making both investments and donations. Palestinians have not been forthcoming in supporting their own “state,” a point well-known in Palestinian circles. (An exception here, of course, is in backing Hamas’s terrorist campaign in recent years.)
–Anyone who keeps their eyes open will see other huge, albeit less impressive than this one, mansions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Even other members of Masri’s own family have been criticized for their ostentation. While this estate may be the most extreme case, it is hardly an exception in that regard.
–Wealthy Palestinians do not give charity to help their poorer cousins. The PA doesn’t even have a comprehensive tax system. Thus, the international community is left to support the Palestinians, and their oversized security apparatus.
–Violence sponsored by the PA was responsible for destroying the chance for their people to work in Israel, hitherto a major aid to their economy; the destruction of infrastructure; and the hesitation of investors, who are also put off by the PA’s corruption and incompetence.
–Intransigence and the failure to reach a compromise solution stem from the Palestinian leadership, including Masri’s buddy, Arafat.

This isn’t the first time that Barry Rubin has criticized Karin Laub’s tendentious reporting. It unfortunately likely won’t be the last either.

Daled Amos has commented on a related issue, illegal building by Palestinians.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

07/06/2008

Celine Dion on the Middle East

Filed under: Miscellaneous, Politics — Tags: , — Soccerdad @ 10:30 am

I’ve learned many important things from Barry Rubin. Last week’s column taught me something new: Celine Dion covered Eric Carnen’s “All by myself.” Dr. Rubin used the lyrics to illustrate the shifting sands of politics of the Middle East.

For more than a half-century, the region’s politics revolved around Arab nationalism. Individual states sought to have influence, leadership, or just to survive. The Arab-Israeli conflict was an important issue in this framework, though not the sole or even the most significant one.

Now, as Celine Dion sings, “Those days are gone.” Today, the centerpiece is a struggle between two blocs, one well-organized, the other weak and facing internal conflict. The former is the Tehran-led alliance of the HISH (Hamas-Iran-Syria-Hizballah); the latter is just about everyone else, call it the coalition of the unwilling.

So how do the moderate Arab states deal with this?

Still, their behavior is understandable. They want to use the radical appeal of Arab nationalism, Islamism, anti-Americanism, and xenophobia to divert attention from their own failings while mobilizing support for themselves as the true defenders against all those big and little satans out there. At the same time, they are happy to appease their foes if possible.

A particularly blatant example is Kuwait’s foreign minister who denounced those who want to wage a false jihad at home. He explained that instead of murdering innocent Muslims, young people should kill Israelis instead. Much of the regimes’ “anti-terrorist” rhetoric is merely really aimed at shifting the targets away from themselves.

On one hand, the Saudis host a global interfaith dialogue conference; float a peace initiative toward Israel, fight domestic terrorism, and battle Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon. On the other hand, they aid terrorists and spread extremist forms of Islam. Egypt is horrified by radical Islamism but refuses to go all-out against Hamas. The official media demonize the West and Israel, while the official Islamic religious apparatus endorses terrorism against Israel and in Iraq.

I’d say that this is a somewhat generalized form of what Dr. Rubin writes in “The truth about Syria,” in that the Assads use all means at their disposal to deflect criticisms of themselves and preserve their family’s tenuous hold on power.

So how does the West respond. I once wrote in a letter to the editor that every time Hafez Assad or Yasser Arafat sneezed it was interpreted as a signal of moderation. It appears that I was more or less correct.

By apologizing, conceding, refusing to defend themselves, or by negotiating, exaggerating the potential for moderation, and dropping sanctions, they can strengthen the extremists and undercut the regimes. When that happens, the regimes know they might better cut their own deal. So while there are arguable reasons to bargain with Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, or Syria, such a strategy splits the anti-HISH alliance and starts a race toward appeasement.

In the Dion song, “Love so distant and obscure, Remains the cure.” But this is politics. The best one can hope for is the wisdom to build on coinciding interests and courage to stand up to unrelenting enemies

And strengthening the extremists, no matter how well they keep the trains running on time, does not help.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

06/25/2008

Good Government Terrorists

Filed under: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome — Tags: , , — Soccerdad @ 10:30 am

Barry Rubin writes about They’re Dictators and Terrorists But What Clean Streets!, after outlining the failures of Fatah, Prof. Rubin lays out the secrets of Hamas’s success.

As for Hamas, it possesses three key weapons.

The mainstream appeal of extremism and terrorism. “Hamas is strong and brutal but very good at governing,” Eyad Sarraj told the New York Times, which describes him as a British-trained psychiatrist and secular opponent of Hamas, After all, he continues, it’s distributing gas coupons, getting people to pay electricity bills, and keeping the city clean.
…
The success of ideological demagoguery. One Hamas supporter told a reporter: “Israel is trying to pressure us to make us forget that the real problem is the occupation.” Of course, there is no Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip, which is one reason why Hamas was able to seize power. “We can take it,” she continued, “The Koran teaches that in the end we will be victorious.”
…
Finally, there’s the strange conclusion that since Hamas isn’t about to fall from power, this proves sanctions have failed. One could say it shows economic and military pressures should be raised further. But at least it should be understood that the sanctions’ purpose is to make Hamas less able to kill even more people, take over the West Bank, damage Israel, or turn Gaza into–to stand Bush’s view on its head–an “attractive alternative.”

The media have been virtual accomplices in bringing Hamas to power, by fostering the impression that, at least, Hamas could make the “trains run on time.” I’ve blogged about how reporters would whitewash Hamas’s ideology and profile one or another Hamas politician who was delivering services. They were, I suppose, good government terrorists.

But of course once they actually had a chance to rule, they proved as corrupt as Fatah. The problem was the media wasn’t nearly as interested in looking into how they operated then.

Prof Rubin’s last point is important too. Last week Griff Witte noted that according to polls Hamas’s popularity has been falling. Still the foreign policy sophisticates insist that Israeli efforts are retaliation – “collective punishment” according to Nicholas Kristoff – for the missiles fired on the Negev.

The latest ceasefire only served to strengthen Hamas politically (and diplomatically.) It may pay off in a short respite for the Israelis of the Negev, but there will be a price to pay.

Fatah is weak and corrupt. Part of that weakness stems from its military defeat by Israel during Operation Defensive Shield. The only thing that will defeat Hamas, unfortunately, is a campaign of a similar nature, with all the costs that is likely to entail.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Powered by WordPress